she only knew how to exist when she was wanted
by BeccabooO1O
Summary: Clarke Griffin comes back before the early morning rays permeate the boundaries of Camp Jaha.


_AN:Told_ from Marcus' pov bc why the hell not. Kane is a theology nerd - since his mom was the religious leader back on the Ark before she met her end - and I will defend this headcannon with all that I _have. Dislcaimer:_ I don't own the 100 - either book or television program #sorry

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Clarke Griffin comes back before the early morning rays permeate the boundaries of Camp Jaha.

She looks haunted when he finds her in the medical bay - hey eyes dull and her face smeared with the traces of dirt and grime, as if she had hastily tried to wash her face by the river before sneaking into camp. [He looks at her - too thin and too pale - and wonders what had happened to her while she was gone.]

"Marcus, where-" Abby's voice halts when she sees the two. [He looks back at her, tears beginning to well in her eyes.] "Clarke." The older woman gasps and then flies to the other side of the room, closing the distance between Mother and Daughter. [He isn't able to overlook either the wince as the older woman comes toward her or the way her shoulders become rigid under the pressure of her mother's arms.]

Abby asks who else is with her. Clarke says she was alone and doesn't answer when her mother tries to prod. He doesn't bother asking her how she had been able to sneak in without him knowing. [The prodigal daughter has returned home, looking as lost as a small child unable to find her parents through the intricate maze of hallways within the Ark.]

Clarke won't leave the medical bay and chooses to sleep in one of the cold metal chair rather than the comfort of her own tent.

[But perhaps there is a reason for that.]

Bellamy Blake is livid that he wasn't told sooner [more so that he wasn't the one to find her] yet hesitant when he finally enters the room and sees her curled up into herself and frowning in her sleep. The boy [because that's really all they are, just _kids_ sent here to die in a war that was never truly theirs to fight] creeps up to the chair as if she's an animal and he is fearful of spooking her. Bellamy stands there for a few more moments before he lightly trails a finger over the side of her face. [His touch is a whisper that is just too loud in the deafening silence.]

A voice calls to him from outside - his sister's - and he straightens up abruptly before stalking out of the remains of what was once the Ark.

[The boy avoids her for far too long.

But then again, she does the same, too.

Why must they dance around each other like this? Marcus asks himself as she watches the two look at each other with a longing in their eyes so strong that not even the Gods themselves can break it.]

Raven Reyes is the next to visit. She keeps a neutral expression on her face as she inspects the sleeping girl with the golden hair. [But her lips are drawn too tight, her eyes too sharp to match the mask she chooses to hide under.] She doesn't say a word and stride back out, her head up high and her cadence quick despite the brace that captures her leg.

As news of Clarke's return spreads through camp, people - both Ark dwellers and what's left of the delinquents - stop by to see the Princess who has come back them. Yet no one is there when she wakes up. [He's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.] Marcus just knows that when he goes in to check up on her, that she's gone. [Guilt overwhelms him when his first thought is that she left again.] He does find her sitting by a fire alone - not eating, not planning, not even around anyone. And so he sits with her.

"Do you plan on leaving again?"

"No."

The two stay in silence, both staring at the embers [He wonders if she currently feels like those embers, slowly dying after giving everything she had to her friends, her family, her _people_ ] and not feeling the need to say anything to the other.

[Though it's not like he was expecting her to.]

Clarke stays in the medical bay, retaking her position as group healer. She refuses to eat before anyone else - sometimes at all - and refuses to sleep - endlessly pushing herself to her limits until she allows herself to close her eyes for longer than a blink. [They find her in the oddest of places: against a wall or table, behind the supplies, in a corner.] Abby asks him in the beginning why she won't re-assimilate herself into the lives of Camp Jaha. He tells her he doesn't know. [Although he thinks that maybe it's a sense of survivor's guilt that has been accumulating inside her soul ever since she was dropped on this god forsaken planet; maybe she's punishing herself for all the pain she believes she cannot be forgiven for, in hopes that she will fade away into nothingness like a religious person will pray the rosary to atone for past sins; maybe; maybe; maybe.]

Abby is gentle with her, afraid of breaking the fragile doll she still believes her daughter to be. Most of the adults avoid her or tread carefully when they need to interact with the elusive quasi-leader. [He can see that this is the last thing she wants. She's rather them yell at her and berate her than be handled with kid gloves like porcelain, and he can't blame her.] The delinquents don't actively evade her, still coming to her with their minor injuries, but that's the only real interaction she has with them. And the ones she had considered her closest friends? They don't speak with her unless forced to.

The only ones who treat her as a human being are the children. [The ones who cannot yet comprehend what she has done or what it mean to lose something or someone close to them.] They follow her around whenever she walks around camp, always wanting to go with her wherever she goes and do what she does so well. [Because by this point, she is even better at the trade of medicine than even her own mother. And everyone knows it.] But at some point, the parents steer their little ones away from the girl - not looking behind to see that her whole body has sagged closer to the ground, the small smile that had graced her still-too-gaunt face returning to its guise of silent suffering as she realises again that she is alone in this strange world and cannot form any connections that will last through the future obstacles that are always bound to crop up.

Yet the children still come to her, and she lets them. She lets them join her in the medical bay as she's organizing her medical tools, lets them take the papers she has been sketching on, lets them tell her about their days, and lets them tell her the past nights stories told by Bellamy Blake as the campfires light up the night sky.

[Marcus wonders where her breaking point is. Where she won't be able to give any longer.]

She doesn't actually interact with Bellamy until his sister is rushed back into camp after falling into a nearby river just a few short weeks before winter is foretold to begin - when the current is too strong and it is too dangerous to traverse across just by stepping on a set of slippery stones.

Octavia Blake is shivering and delirious as she is carried into the medical bay and set down on one of the tables. Marcus watches as Clarke shoos away the frightened children out of the room and begins to work, her face devoid of any emotion until it flickers when Bellamy barges is, demanding to know what happened to his sister.

Clarke ignores him for the most part, doing everything she can to break the fever that had begun to set it. She tries to make Octavia take in fluids and Bellamy stays behind her, doing whatever it is that she may ask of him with a look of determination on his face. [Marcus remembers a time before Mount Weather, when the two leaders worked together so seamlessly that they could have been one person.]

Clarke only stops - and the pause is momentary - when Octavia whimpers something in her fever-ridden haze.

"You let them harvest him."

The golden haired princess inhales sharply and wills the knot that has grown in her throat to loosen. She looks at Bellamy, who is getting more water for his sister. [It has been for her a couple times, but she just brushes him off - saying that Octavia needs it more that she does. In her mind, she's right.]

The younger Blake falls into a dreamless slumber and the two take a moment to breathe. Bellamy looks at her, studies her, notes how she has changed since they first fell to the ground. [Her eyes are colder and her skin paler. The roundness about her cheeks has melted into sharp bones that match the ice in her eyes.]

The moment's over too soon and Clarke is back to idly moving things around in the room. [The room she has made into both her home and her prison.] The boy is left to watch. [He helplessly looks between the two girls who have become the most important people in his life.]

"Clarke," He says her name. [That one word - when it comes out of his mouth like that - sounds like a prayer, a holy cantation meant for a higher being that should be revered.]

"You can move her to your tent whenever you want." She says, air of detachment surrounding her. "We're lucky she was brought back to camp in time." [She says _we're_ instead of _you're_ because even through her self exile, she's still as much a part of Camp Jaha as anyone is.]

He just nods in response [short and brusque, how he's been around her since she came back] and lifts Octavia, giving her refuge in his tent [the one that had been moved closest to the medical bay since that morning] and leaving the other to her solitude.

[The children do not come back that day.]

Clarke doesn't leave the medical bay during the days that follow. She tells her mother someone needs to be there when the frost of winter hits - because it will hit Camp Jaha harder than anyone has been expecting. [But truly, she's closing herself off from everybody in the boundaries of the camp. For she only knows how to exist when she is wanted.]

Raven Reyes charges into the medical bay one night, startling both Clarke and the little boy she's treating. [It isn't really anything, his parents just pushed him towards her in an attempt to get some peace for themselves.] The boy hops out of the chair and scampers out of the room after glancing at the mechanic for a moment.

"You're not eating."

"I'll eat later."

"You're not sleeping."

"I'm not tired."

"Bullshit. Where's your blanket?"

"I gave it to one of the children."

"Why?"

"He needed it more than I do."

"And what's going to happen when Bellamy finds out."

"Nothing."

"What makes you say that?"

"We don't talk."

"And whose fault is that?"

"Mine."

"I was going to say 'both of yours', but if you want to keep on going with this pity party, than be my guest. Just don't expect anyone you invited to actually turn up."

"This is not a pity party."

"Then what exactly is _this_ , Clarke? Because I'm pretty confused here."

" _This_ is me protecting everyone."

"From yourself."

"I just don't want to hurt anyone anymore."

"Clarke, everyone's hurting because you're hurting."

"Can't you see, Raven? The fact that I'm even here is hurting people. I never should have come back."

"Bullshit."

"No, Lexa was right. I really do cause pain everywhere I go. Finn, Mount Weather, _Bellamy_."

"What about Bellamy?"

"They harvested him!"

"What do you have to do with that."

"I was the one to tell him to go in."

"That's not on you."

"Yes it is!"

"No, it's not! That wasn't your fault. Mount Weather was taking _our_ blood and bone marrow - not you. Finn… Finn had gotten himself into that situation - not you. Clarke, it's not your fault."

"...Would you still pick me first?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

And then Clarke Griffin smiles, possibly the realest smile that anyone had seen on her since her fated return. It doesn't quite reach her eyes, but Raven would take that over the girl's numbed state moments before. [This is what progress looks like. This is what it must be like for a tree to begin to grow again after the mass devastation of a forest fire.]

Everyone looks up with surprise when Raven enters the mess hall, Clarke close behind her. They take their shares of the day's catch - rabbit - and some of the berries [the bright red berries that taste the equivalent of how happiness should feel, like the new life presented to the cleansed soul though reincarnation].

The girls move on to one of the tables where Kyle Wick is sitting, tinkering with spare parts. He gives Clarke a small smile before wrapping an arm around Raven and continuing on - nudging the blonde when Raven pushes him away playfully, laughing at him. The healer just smiles at the two and returns to her food.

Monty Green tentatively sits down across from Clarke, a hesitant smile on his face before he begins to eat his own meager meal. Jasper Jordan joins and soon more follow - including Nathan Miller and even the Grounder Lincoln. The Blake siblings take their food and make a beeline for the quickly overflowing table, Octavia sitting next to Lincoln and Bellamy taking the only place left - next to Clarke, as if it is the most natural thing in the universe. [Marcus muses that this must be what it was like before everyone fell from the heavens, when the only concerns were surviving and keeping each other safe through the night.]

A couple nights later, Bellamy finds Clarke in his tent, sitting on his bed. He lets the opening flap fall behind him, but he doesn't move. [He can't bring himself to move, because he knows that he will completely lose it if this is just another sick dream ridden with longing and his need for her to be around him.]

"You didn't tell me."

"It didn't matter."

"Yes, it did." [Her voice rises to what could be considered a shout.] "It does."

"You left anyway." [" _You left me anyway._ "]

"I did. But I'm not going to leave again." [" _I won't leave you again._ "]

He closes the distance between the two. [Bellamy touches her face, barely letting his fingertips graze the skin on her cheek, just like he had that first night she was back. She looks up at him and the ocean is in her eyes, emotions swirling into a whirlpool and threatening to drag him under - even if she can't help it. He knows. Father Almighty, he knows just what is capable of happening and he doesn't care because he'd rather not do any of this if he can't have his brave princess with him.]

It's the first night she hasn't spent in the medical bay [the medical bay that is too sterile and too harsh]. Abby worries the next morning, but he sees the two impromptu leaders leave his tent and Marcus Kane knows that there's nothing to really worry about anymore.

[The Princess finally returns home in the early morning, the other part of her dutifully by her side, ready for whatever the dawn might bring.]

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 _AN:_ Everything hurts and I'm still not okay

Remember to Smile :)

~Becca


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